Lacrimosa
by audi katia
Summary: The listless, vacant vase living in the house isn't a vase at all. Artemis is not holding seeds, blooming flowers within herself. She's an urn, a living cadaver holding all the memories Zatanna has been forcing inside her to mingle in the ashes of who Artemis used to be. / written for Snaibsel Week 2016, prompt: Halloween/Paranormal


_As always, I am a day late and a dollar short. This was written for Snaibsel Week 2016, Day 2 Prompt: Halloween/Paranormal. This was inspired in part by my love for obsessive desire and clawing love, and the haunting so prevalent in Young Justice/superhero fandoms. I want to thank Zaatanna on tumblr for co-hosting Snaibsel Week with me on tumblr and also for being a wonderful and beautiful human being. I also want to thank Sheyla for her lovely and helpful feedback as well as the title suggestion. And thank you all for reading. Please enjoy._

* * *

Red. Everything was red. From the blood pouring out of Artemis's chest to the blur of Bart racing towards her fallen body to the color permeating the edges of Zatanna's vision. Rivets of blood exploded around Artemis's body, all red, all escaping.

* * *

"Green."

Artemis looks up silently, her hand paused over the purple mug. The edge is chipped, a reminder of a night months past that they had spent a little drunk, a little in love.

"Your favorite color is green," Zatanna reminds her. She gives what she hopes is a cheerful smile, a gentle nudge.

Artemis blinks, slow and languid, but her hand shifts in the cupboard to the green mug instead.

Zatanna chooses the purple mug for herself, filling both mugs with steaming tea. Watching Artemis add her usual two spoonfuls of honey with practiced measurements, she places her lip to the chipped edge and remembers when Artemis had dropped it and apologized with sloppy kisses and loud laughter.

* * *

Brucely leaps up at her with excitement, sniffing hopefully at the edges of her sweatshirt.

"That was Artemis's, wasn't it?"

Beneath her veneer of practiced calm, Zatanna finds herself proud of the way Bart barely shudders when saying her name. She nods and even offers a small smile.

"It must still smell like her," he muses, pulling on Brucely's leash a bit to keep him from flattening Zatanna to the ground with his enthusiasm. "He really misses her."

"Me too," she says, avoiding his eyes. It's not a lie and Bart doesn't press any further.

* * *

Artemis sleeps like the dead every night and the irony is not lost on Zatanna. She never moves, never snuffles, her eyes never twitch under thin and veined eyelids. She never reacts to Zatanna beside her, the bed dipping with the weight of a second body.

After several desperate nights of Zatanna placing her fingers to Artemis's skinny throat, finding the pulse and nearly crying with relief in perfect time to her still beating heart, she asks Artemis how she sleeps.

"I dream," Artemis tells her. But her eyes are hooded when she speaks and Zatanna is too scared to ask for details. Some things, she has learned, are best not known.

Artemis moves closer to Zatanna, the only indication she ever gives of wanting anything at all, and Zatanna holds her, mouthing wordlessly against blonde hair and soothing her shaking hands over cold skin.

* * *

Zatanna chooses to think of her as a vase. Empty, but waiting for flowers to bloom within her. So every reminder of the life Artemis left behind, the life they had shared, is another seed.

"You never really liked the Lord of the Rings books, remember? We watched the movies once, but you kept saying Legolas's form was off and I couldn't take it anymore so we turned off the tv and had a dance party instead."

"Your sister showed up once when we were having dinner with your mother. Remember the look on your mother's face when she smacked Jade's hand with a spoon? Remember Jade's face?"

"Remember the first night we spent together? You showed up at my apartment days later and told me your pillow still smelled like me. I told you that was the most beautiful thing you ever said to me and you told me to shut up before you kissed me."

"Remember, Artemis? Please remember."

* * *

It's not that Artemis can't do anything. She can speak. She can dress herself. She knows who the president is. She had once braided Zatanna's hair with deft and practiced fingers, each slight tug of her hair in Artemis's hands erupting goosebumps over her skin.

But the rest of it is gone. The memories and the experiences and the little shrugs and huffs of impatience and the tiny moments of soft eye contact between them, all the parts that made up Artemis before are gone.

She spends her time, sitting, blinking, watching, waiting to see what happens next.

* * *

They live in Shadowcrest, left behind for Zatanna after her father's sacrifice. Neither of them work. Artemis clearly cannot and Zatanna cannot leave Artemis alone. She's careful with their money and her eyes cast about the house, shrewd to find what objects can be sold, what pieces of furniture can be traded, what reminders of her childhood she can spare.

They pass the time quietly, casually, with unlimited spare time that Zatanna thinks is slowly driving her insane. So, she busies herself with menial tasks. The house is immaculate, the library dustless and the wooden floors gleaming. The fridge is full of dishes, each holding one of Artemis's favorite foods. The furniture is rearranged, the cobwebs are swept up. There is nothing undone.

When the weather is calm, they walk around the property, the edges blending into wooded forests that become unnaturally silent as soon as Artemis enters. The birds do not sing, the animals do not move. Zatanna can see unblinking eyes through the leaves, watching Artemis with stillness and fear as though she does not belong on Earth at all.

* * *

Five days after the funeral and two days before she moved back to Shadowcrest, she stood before the Justice League.

"I understand," Superman said, knowledge and disappointment staining his voice in equal measure.

"Take as much time as you need," Wonder Woman offered kindly, her hand a heavy weight on Zatanna's shoulder.

Commiserating voices sounded out around her and Zatanna avoided everyone's eyes before slipping out of the room and heading down the hall. She was nearly at the zeta tubes, the bright blue of their crackling electricity drawing her forward. But then a sound behind her, loud enough to be deliberate, halted her gait instantly.

She spun on her heel, mouth already open and ready to argue with Dinah for a countless time about needing a session together before she saw Batman instead. She narrowed her eyes at his usual dark and imposing stance, but arguments died in her throat as she caught the tightness in his jaw.

"Time away from the team will not relieve your grief."

It was probably the kindest thing Bruce had ever directed to her, but she was still too raw to react with any sort of grace.

"Who are you to tell me how to deal with grief?" she bit back, remembering but not caring about secrets Dick told her about Bruce long ago. The clench of his jaw never released.

"She's not coming back, Zatanna."

* * *

She'll be in a grave herself before she admits that Bruce was right.

This Artemis is different. This isn't the Artemis who tore down the streets on Halloween, with fire in her eyes as she shot arrow after arrow. This isn't the Artemis who rolled her eyes the night M'gann proposed a girls-only sleepover, but let her paint her nails glittery green anyway. This isn't the Artemis who cried for days when Wally disappeared. This isn't the Artemis who stuttered her way through dinner when she finally introduced Zatanna to her mother as her girlfriend.

No, this Artemis forgets she hates mashed potatoes. This Artemis wears socks instead of running around barefoot. This Artemis watches Zatanna listlessly, eyes calm and waiting instead of rash and wanting. This Artemis stares at the bow and arrow on the fireplace mantle but never picks them up. This Artemis never jokes, never asks for anything, never demands to know why they live this way. This Artemis isn't really living at all.

And it takes too long, but Zatanna realizes that Artemis is done living. She was done that day a year ago, in pile of blood that Zatanna still sees when she closes her eyes.

* * *

Artemis's corpse lay in the bathtub for hours. Her graying skin, mottled and dry, had been stark against the white of the tile until Zatanna poured the potion into the near-boiling water. Amidst the steam rose the putrid scent of bile and Zatanna gagged as much from the smell as the sight of Artemis's body. She could still see the rudimentary stitches the morticians had slaved over for hours, stitching her back together so her mother could bury her whole.

* * *

The potion dissipated in the water, a milky substance that hid her limbs from view. Zatanna stared unblinking until every stitch and scar was hidden. She pressed her hand to Artemis's head, gentle but firm and pushed her completely into the water, watching with determination as her mouth, her pointed nose, her arched eyebrows sank beneath the surface.

The room, once steamy from the hot water, grew cold and colder as the hours passed. During that time, Zatanna was racked with an absolute stillness, too terrified to move and break the precarious hold she had on the room. Only her lips moved quick and deft as spells dripped from her lips.

Gnirb reh kcab.

Gnirb reh kcab.

Gnirb reh kcab.

* * *

The potion disappeared from the water just as the sun rose, pink and golden light filtering through the blinds.

With a single word, she levitated Artemis, because surely she was Artemis now and not a corpse, to the bed. Her body still bared the marks where the morticians tried to fix her broken edges, but Zatanna covered her with a blanket and smiled with delirious relief.

Artemis was blemished, but whole. And Zatanna did not realize yet that it wasn't enough.

* * *

The town is several miles away, a quick trip in her Sedan that she traded in for her Maserati three days after Artemis's funeral. It's less flashy, less memorable. Zatanna smiles at the cashiers, keeping small talk idle as she picks out Artemis's favorite spices at the grocery store, her favorite donuts from the bakery.

Then she turns around and drives back to Artemis, the radio turned down low in the background and the open town turning into tall trees and small roads. Shadowcrest is quiet and lonesome, tucked away on the edges of a forest where no one hunts, no one visits.

She thinks to herself that it's the perfect place to leave a body, just off the road and covered in leaves. Zatanna catches herself mid-thought and turns up the volume of the radio, blasting out the sound of her own scream.

* * *

"Be careful, my friend," Kaldur advised, his voice still choked and stilted less than four hours after the funeral.

The unnatural coolness of his body did little to comfort her, and the weight of arms around her did nothing but make her feel trapped. His words lingered in the air and she could almost tangibly see the ache still racked through him by Tula's death.

"I will be," she whispered into his shoulder before burying her face in his neck.

It's funny that, even after everything he put them all through, Kaldur was still the hardest one to lie to.

* * *

Artemis had never been one to really express affection.

When she was with Wally, he had always instigated. Zatanna remembers being young and miserably in love with Artemis, watching from across the room as Wally would sling a casual arm over Artemis's slender shoulder. She remembers the roll of Artemis's eyes before the fond smile would spread across like a secret and she leaned into his touch.

She remembers Artemis flinching away from M'gann as she sat stoic and wrecked at Wally's memorial service. After, no one could touch her, her hands clenching the metal handles of her mother's wheelchair in favor of her mother's offered hand.

Zatanna remembers the fear in her own hands as she reached out for Artemis that first time, more than a year since they had last seen Wally's smile, before her fingers brushed against the hard muscle in Artemis's arm. The light in her dark eyes had dimmed with confusion before lighting up into sudden understanding, her mouth dropping slightly as they faced each other. Zatanna remembers the breath falling through her teeth and brushing the loose hair around Artemis's face, an indirect caress. Even then, Zatanna was the one to reach out, lean in, bring herself to Artemis's still parted lips.

Now, Artemis is the one who follows her wordlessly from room to room in the mansion. Artemis is the one who presses against her shoulder as they watch television. Artemis is the one who wakes up from her undisturbed slumber and rolls over on their bed to rest her head gently on Zatanna's chest. The mansion is large, the sheets ripped off the old furniture and every window flung open to air out the musty scent of neglect. They have plenty of room to move around, to have their own separate spaces, but Artemis remains close to Zatanna's side.

It's the only kindness that remains, Zatanna thinks.

* * *

They fought just an hour before she died, a typical spat with both unwilling to pretend goodbyes were temporary.

"Nothing bad is going to happen just because we split up!" Zatanna had snapped, her hands flung from her sides in an explosion.

"I didn't think something bad was going to happen," Artemis lied pithily, her own hands digging into her sides, tight where Zatanna was electric.

Zatanna faltered first, always did, and left in a huff, still feeling Artemis's angry glare hot on her back.

* * *

They don't argue anymore. Artemis is never angry, her eyes never narrowed, her teeth never sharp. But she never really smiles, either.

* * *

Jaime had taken her away from Artemis's body, his hands shaken and the smell of vomit still caked around his mouth from when he had first seen the spilt red. Nothing registered except the ringing in her eyes and the stain on her hands from where she had grabbed Artemis's shoulders, shaking her without abandon until Jaime gripped her shoulders.

She did not even notice the team filtering in, only looking up at the sudden ring of Gar's voice high and desperate and brutal above the rest.

"You promised!" he cried out in a shudder. "You promised no more faking deaths! You promised!"

* * *

"You can't be a superhero without living with ghosts," Artemis had once proclaimed, voice tight and eyes burning as she taped up the final box of Wally's clothes. Her hand rubbed brutally against her eyes, and Wally's ghost lingering in those tears, locked in the embrace when Zatanna took hold of Artemis's trembling hands.

For years, Artemis had carried with her the constant presence of Wally, loving Zatanna even with his ghost beside them. Zatanna had made room for him in her and Artemis's life together, his memory between them even as they lay gasping in bed, covered in sweat.

Now in her father's house, Zatanna is used to living with ghosts, has done so for most of her life. But never does she feel more haunted then when Artemis sleeps beside her, unmoving and unsettling for hours.

* * *

The cellphone dings prettily on the kitchen table, the screen a sudden purple flash in the otherwise white light bleaching the air. Artemis hands it to Zatanna wordlessly, eyes disinterested as it passes from one cold hand to the other.

It's an e-mail from Stanford, forwarded from Artemis's long-abandoned address, something about finishing her final stretch of grad school. God, hadn't they gotten the notice? Zatanna barely registers the text, eyes wide and filling with tears as she stares at the school's logo until the screen blurs.

This is what makes Zatanna realize the enormity of what she had done. Artemis had died so many times and lost everything again when Zatanna brought her back.

* * *

Zatanna didn't remember falling, didn't remember Connor crashing down the entire wall, didn't remember Bart's wail splitting the air into halves, didn't remember anything. But hours later, her knees were scuffed, the echoes had faded, and Artemis was dead.

* * *

Zatanna comes home from the grocery store early, the bags floating in a line behind her, occasionally bumping against each other as she levitates them. The door is already, the first sign that something is wrong. It's the first cool wind of the season and Artemis hates the cold, so Zatanna enters the house with heightened trepidation.

She tiptoes in, careful her boots are silent on the hardwood floors of the main entrance, maneuvering around the sweeping staircase towards the kitchen to set down the still-floating bags. But she hesitates again, hearing small noises of movement and muttering through the door flung open on its hinges.

"Artemis sleeps in whenever she gets the chance. Artemis likes Ice Road Truckers. Artemis and Zatanna quote Mean Girls all the time and it is a movie they used to like. Artemis likes two teaspoons of honey in her tea. Artemis never heats up water for her tea in the microwave, only with a kettle."

There's a pause between each sentence, Artemis's voice rattling off each bit like items on a list. Each fact springs a sudden memory to Zatanna of quiet reminders she had shared with Artemis that morning over their usual breakfast of bagels and tea. Her breath is stuck in her throat as she peeks in the door, careful to hide herself behind the cabinets as best she can.

Artemis is perched delicately on the stools around the island, away from her standard seat at the table. Her phone shifts from one hand to the other as she continues, "Artemis prefers strawberry cream cheese. Zatanna is in charge of buying groceries. Artemis hates food shopping."

Zatanna can see the phone lighting up with each sentence and she understands in brutal clarity. Artemis is not remembering, Artemis is memorizing.

She fumbles out of the doorway, ducking out of the way of her bags still behind her. Not caring about the clack of her heels on the floor, Zatanna steps back outside before slumping against the columns supporting the porch roof. The bags drop beside her and the tote holding flour comically releases a cloudy burst to signify the rough landing.

It dawns on Zatanna that she hasn't even said the bit about food shopping, had never said Artemis preferred strawberry cream cheese, but had only been offering her favorite foods, buying her usual clothes. She hadn't realized what she was doing, she thought she had been helping Artemis remember.

The listless, vacant vase living in the house isn't a vase at all. Artemis is not holding seeds, blooming flowers within herself. She's an urn, a living cadaver holding all the memories Zatanna has been forcing inside her to mingle in the ashes of who Artemis used to be.

* * *

"The world was so much brighter again when he came back to me," the witch had said when Zatanna finally stopped sobbing. With puffy eyes, she followed the crooked finger of the witch to see the man on the couch. He stared at the book in his hands, peaceful and content, eyes roaming the page with a calmness that made Zatanna wretch in envy.

Zatanna hadn't realized yet, had not known better.

* * *

Days pass without reprieve and Zatanna does not come home early anymore. Their lives follow a stricter schedule and if Artemis ever needs time alone, she never makes it known to Zatanna.

But the guilt has other plans and Zatanna find herself waking up from fitful, disturbed sleep hours before her alarm sounds. The moonlight is still drifting through the gauzy curtains Artemis had long ago mocked her lovingly for buying, highlighting the curved lines of Artemis's sleeping form.

Sleep falls from her eyes as Zatanna focuses her attention on the rise and fall of Artemis's chest, her eyes trailing the slope of her bust where she knows Artemis's heart still beats. Her hands around the pillow clench with the burst of an idea creeping past the muddled thoughts and sleepless desires still clouding her subconscious. The pillowcase is cool in her hands, quickly warming under her grip as she wildly considers pressing it to Artemis's face, silencing those manic cries in her mind to end everything.

But even as she shifts her weight to from her supine position, her knee knocks against Artemis's hand. Zatanna can feel the unnatural corner of a phone against her skin and that more than anything forces her to drop the pillow. It lands with a muted thump that Artemis does not react to, and with bated breath held between her teeth, Zatanna reaches under the sheet to pull the phone from her sleep-slack grip.

With a glance to Artemis to make sure she remains asleep, Zatanna slides a thumb over the phone, opening it instantly. With the memory of Artemis's recitation in her mind, Zatanna realizes this lack of password not as a relief that Artemis felt comfortable around her, but as a reminder that this Artemis does not carry with her the constant vigilance of her upbringing.

In the Notes of the phone, Zatanna finds a single document.

 **Artemis and Zatanna spend Halloween in the city every year.**

 **Artemis does not wear makeup.**

 **Artemis hates the ocean.**

 **Zatanna loved Artemis.**

 **Brucely was Artemis's dog. Bart adopted him.**

 **She says we were happy before and I believe her.**

 **She is so beautiful.**

The list goes on and on, Zatanna reading with sickness crawling up her throat even as the sun begins the lighten the room, peeking through the star-strewn sky. There is no date on the list, nothing she can compare with to track the growth of the list, only one section bleeding into the next. But eventually she realizes, it's no longer a list of facts but a list of confessions.

 **I don't feel like the girl in the pictures.**

 **Zatanna promises she'll take me to see my mom one day, but I don't really care.**

 **I'm supposed to miss her, but I don't know who she is.**

 **She doesn't remind me of what I should know anymore. I don't know if I'm doing a good job or if she doesn't care anymore.**

 **I hate tea, but I don't think I ever used to.**

 **I don't remember dying, I don't remember coming back, I don't think I'm right.**

 **I don't know how to make her happy.**

 **I love her but she loves who I used to be.**

Zatanna hates herself, tears messy on her cheeks and fingers cold and clenched around the phone. Artemis has been beating herself up, silently suffering and trying to be who Zatanna remembers. She is sad and frustrated and scared and lonely and every ugly and terrible feeling Zatanna had been trying to save her from.

A scathing though presses through her thoughts that maybe it was really all about herself the whole time. It was about relieving her own loneliness, her own sadness and frustration. Zatanna had lived once without Artemis and had known she could not do it again and that was why she brought her back. It was not a kindness to Artemis, but a means of self-preservation.

Her ugly thoughts are silenced, replaced with cold fear as Artemis suddenly sits up in bed. She feels her mouth in a frozen O as they lock eyes.

"What," Artemis slurs, sleepy eyes unfocused on the phone as she sits up, the sheets falling down around her waist.

"List," is all Zatanna can utter through her hated lips, a single word encompassing the truth of what she has learned and can never unknow.

The silence stretches on, both girls lost and tiny in the bed, staring with guarded expressions and jagged mouths agape.

This Artemis is not the same Artemis Zatanna lost. She has known that much for quite some time. But Artemis is not a shell. The phone is a heavy weight in Zatanna's hand, a solid reminder that Artemis is her own person, a personality laden with all the memories and secrets Zatanna had piled on her, burying and suffocating her with the weight of longing for a person who is never coming back.

That's the moment that has been months in the making, the final denial fading away as Zatanna realizes what she had ignored for so long. Artemis is never coming back. That grief claws its way up her throat, past the sickness and the ugliness of all her other deeds, until it rips out of her raw and haggard.

"Zee," the sound slips out of Artemis's mouth mechanically, but the way her hand reaches for Zatanna is unpracticed and smooth. The movement comforts Zatanna where the sound unnerves her.

Who Artemis was is never coming back. But this Artemis, who is still in the night and soft in the morning and always reaching out to Zatanna, is here. And when Zatanna finally lets the phone drop from her shaking hands to grasp the lifeline found in Artemis's palm, she realizes that this Artemis loves Zatanna, too.

And Artemis is Artemis. Artemis is not the memories that Zatanna has piled on her, Artemis is not all her old likes and dislikes. Artemis will always be Artemis, even with new memories and experiences. She will always be caring and careful and organized and resilient, and she will always love in a blinding, all-encompassing stubbornness.

Zatanna has been so focused on her ghosts, on her memories, on covering her tracks, on carefully crafting together all the broken pieces of Before, that she never looked at who Artemis is now.

Artemis's hand is hot in her grip, and she kisses her hard white knuckle before lowering her forehead to the clench of their joined hands. Zatanna lets out the grief caught in her throat, shuddering with the force of it.

"Sorry, I'm so sorry," she sputters out, sobbing over her loss in this final catharsis. "I want to make this right."

Her words break down into incomprehensible sobs, but Artemis pulls her close and whispers into Zatanna's sleep-worn hair, "Make this right"

Unable to speak, Zatanna nods furiously into the crook of Artemis's neck.

"Okay," Artemis agrees, her own voice tiny and soft and sad. "I can wait. I can wait forever."

* * *

Connor had to pull M'gann away from the casket, she was sobbing too hard.

As they exited the room, Gar trailing behind them, anxious and forlorn in every step, Zatanna could hear M'gann's words echoing in the room.

"How many times can one person die?"

* * *

For days after the spell, Zatanna lay in bed with Artemis, wrapped up beside her and leaving only for the essentials. The hours stretched on, Zatanna flitting back and forth manically between devastating doubt and consuming conviction. Desperate and stubborn and determined to be there for Artemis when she awoke, she let the days pass on loop in continuous flux during their living Purgatory.

Three days after the spell. Zatanna felt a jackrabbit heart beneath the palm of her hand and the echo of Artemis's sharp inhale deafened her. She nearly leapt from the bed, quick to her knees to sit over Artemis, to see the tear of her eyelids as Artemis finally revived. Her pupils blown out, Zatanna felt herself consumed by the blackness, allowed herself the luxury of drinking in the image she thought stolen from her forever.

"Artemis, Artemis, Artemis," she breathed on each rapid exhale. Her fingers wove tangles in messy blonde hair on the pillow, "You're alive, you're here."

Artemis did not move, did not speak, but none of that mattered. Zatanna whispered over and over her love, the weight of relief a solid hit to her chest.

* * *

Artemis didn't move for hours, didn't speak for twice that. So Zatanna filled the hours with chatter and kisses and gentle touches. She massaged life and color back to Artemis's limbs, brushed her hair until it shone, went on at length about the love and life they shared.

"I don't remember," was the first sentence Artemis uttered, her lips clumsy and awkward with disuse.

Ice shattered in Zatanna's veins, skin frozen and stomach plummeting for a cruel moment. But then Artemis moved, reached out to touch a fallen strand of black hair, before the backs of bent fingers weakly brushed her numb cheek.

"Stay," Artemis offered next, sotto voice broken and rough. "Please."

* * *

"The tea is in the trash."

Startled, Zatanna looks up from the book she had been staring at unseeingly. Artemis stands in the doorway, arms crossed defensively as though guarding herself away from whatever rebuke Zatanna may return.

"I figured, why drink it if you hate it?" she answers quietly, unable to tear away from the unasked question bright in Artemis's eye.

It's all they've said to each other all day and it feels like maybe the only real conversation they've had in months.

* * *

They lay together that night because Zatanna asked if Artemis wanted to her to leave, to sleep somewhere else, but Artemis shook her head with a fierceness that erased all doubt. It's then that Zatanna finally tells her the truth of it all, ever last brutal detail of what she has done. She tells her how it felt to lose her the first time, the fake time Dick had orchestrated. She tells her the hours spent crying, the regret in having never confessed her feelings. She tells her about the joy and elation when Artemis came back, the whiplash of emotion when Wally was gone and Artemis was the heartbroken one. She tells her of the love in heart as they came together, the time they had spent carving out a piece of happiness for themselves in the world. She tells her of their fights rooted in the pain of losing loved ones, the final fight they had, the devastation Zatanna had torn herself through after her second death. She tells her about the smell of bile in the bathtub, she tells her about the dirt she cleaned out from under her fingernails even days after digging up Artemis's grave. She tells her how much she hates the scars and stitches still tying up her skin where something bigger and stronger had ripped her apart. She tells her about the witch and her love, the e-mail from Stanford, the warning from Batman.

But that isn't the hardest part. The hardest part is telling Artemis how she really feels about her, the ugly, twisted mess of it, and how confused Zatanna feels all the time. There's the old Artemis and the new Artemis and maybe an Artemis who never existed and never will, and she doesn't know which is which anymore.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

She thinks she could spend the rest of her life whispering these words and it would never be enough.

Artemis cries.

It's the most emotion Zatanna has seen from her in months.

* * *

"I'll never stop missing her," Paula said over tea three weeks after Artemis died. "But it means so much to me that you're here now."

She looked tired, eyes red, hands shaking. But her wan smile was sincere as she looked over the rim of the mug at Zatanna.

"Of course," Zatanna promised, twisting and guilty in her seat. "It's nice to remember her with you."

* * *

Zatanna picked idly at her duvet, just transported from Shadowcrest, wondering how long the smell of her house would linger before fading forever in favor of the musty Mount Justice. A noise at the door alerted her to Artemis's presence, a hesitant figure backlit from the hall light. Their eyes locked, a quiet moment passing between them before Artemis spoke up.

"Are you sure there's nothing else I can do?" she asked, chewing her lower lip in a way that would have enticed Zatanna even a day before.

"Find a way for me to nap for a week straight?" Zatanna half-joked, giving a tight smile to lighten the tension.

Artemis took the bait, shaking her head. Her hair caught the light in the doorway, a halo that Zatanna found completely out of place and completely endearing all at once.

"Man, if only," Artemis chuckled. The sound waned, broken off before she dragged the toe of her boot in random patterns on the floor. "Sure there's nothing I can do?"

"All I want is to bring him back," Zatanna answered honestly, simply. "But that can never happen. I'm just glad I got to say goodbye."

Artemis's supine shadow shifted, and even from Zatanna's perch on her bed she could see bitten nails gripping the doorframe in cautious sympathy.

"Anyway," Zatanna continued, "no offense, but I really just want to be alone."

Artemis nodded once, terse and understanding, before turning around. The door clicked as she left, the sound of her footsteps fading quieter and quieter.

Funny, Zatanna thought, there was no comfort in the silence.

* * *

"You know she's only worried about you," Raquel reminded Zatanna yet again from their post at the factory.

Zatanna felt herself losing her cool and wished for a moment she could stamp her foot without appearing childish and insecure. Instead she let out a slow breath, rubbing at her temples before turning to Raquel with a tired expression.

"I know," she drew out the word. "I worry about her, too, but it's just a standard mission."

"Why don't you just go to her now? Conner and I can handle this on our own." Raquel gestured over to Connor, who bared an expression of extreme discomfort with their conversation.

"Leave me out of this," he said with a shortness that made Raquel and Zatanna bit back quiet laughs.

"It'll be okay," Zatanna said, brushing it all off.

* * *

The day after Artemis died, Zatanna tore through her father's library, ripping books from the cases. Pages fluttered around, a chaotic frenzy of search and loss.

Gnihtyna, gnihtyan!" she screamed into the room, fingernails scratching at spines at random, eyes skimming over dead languages and forgotten tongues.

In the back of her mind, she knew her father kept these from her for a reason. But when she finally found the name of a witch lost in the pages, she was far from her right mind.

* * *

They spend their days like polite strangers, the only difference that strangers don't hold each other's hair, don't brush shoulders intentionally when they pass one another. They still reach for one another, but they do not speak beyond what their fingers trail across each other's skin.

"If I asked, would you undo it?" Artemis asks a few nights later, her voice reaching across the small space between them.

"Yes," Zatanna answers. And she would, she almost did. But now she'll only do it if that's what Artemis wants.

Artemis is quiet for a long time, and Zatanna starts to wonder if she was hoping for a different answer, but then Artemis says with an unmistakable note of finality, "I don't want to leave."

"I'll leave if you want me to," Zatanna offers, her breath held carefully steady.

"No," Artemis is adamant, "never that." She shifts in the bed, no longer on her back, but on her side with her knees tucked up and her face directly across from Zatanna's. When she speaks again, Zatanna can feel her breath wash over her face, still minty from her toothpaste. "What do I do now?"

The truth comes easy this time.

"That's up to you."

* * *

It's better after that. Less tense, less terrifying. Zatanna has a terrible suspicion that all this time Artemis has felt trapped. Maybe all she needed was options.

* * *

When Zatanna gives Artemis her wallet, she's half-convinced that this is the end. That she'll never come back through those doors. The sound of the car starting up is nearly enough to make her run outside, dramatically throw herself in front of the car and stop Artemis.

But, she keeps herself tucked inside, doing little more than tug a sweater over her head against the chill through the house after Artemis had opened all the windows. The minutes tick on the grandfather clock in the entranceway, Zatanna's eyes trained on it even as she refuses to leave the staircase, desperate to see Artemis the minute she returns. If she returns.

It's an hour before she hears the car again, and her heart feels as though it will live permanently in her throat as she spies golden hair and arms laden with grocery bags. Her knees nearly buckle with relief as she stands slowly to greet Artemis.

Artemis appears in the doorway, dark eyes terrified and determined, as she walks closer, her footsteps and her heart racing in her ears the only thing Zatanna can hear. Wordlessly, Artemis offers up the bags hanging off her sinewy arm and Zatanna takes them. She peaks inside, finds mashed potatoes lying on the top.

"Made with real butter," she reads off, as casually as she can, careful to keep out any influence.

Artemis hesitates, eyes flicking from Zatanna to the bags of food, but then she charges off to the kitchen with her bags in tow and her eyes brighter than Zatanna has ever seen.

* * *

The moon grew full nearly an entire month after the funeral. Grass was barely poking out of the mound of dirt when Zatanna furiously tossed it aside.

"Peek enoyreve yawa," she repeated over and over since passing through the iron gates. Her feet had carried her on instinct, a well worn path she had burrowed into the ground on countless visits. "Od ton tel enoyna ees em."

Not even a bat passed over her, the moon her only companion as the grave grew bigger. Finally, with the marker covered in dirt and obscuring Artemis's name, the top of the casket was seen through sifted earth. Zatanna wailed, a banshee shriek in the night, cutting through her own spell to brush the dirt off with her hands.

"Don't you understand? I love you, I love you," she said it constant, frantic.

* * *

"You can't hide forever," Dick said, the day before Zatanna quit the team. Blood turning to ice water, Zatanna opened her mouth to deny everything. Then Dick said, "Just because she's gone doesn't mean you get to lock yourself away and never come back."

Dick was right, of course. She couldn't hide forever. Not with the team, at least.

* * *

"Did you ever tell them?"

Artemis is staring at a picture on the mantle, a carefully framed snapshot of herself and her mother two summers ago when she and Zatanna had surprised Paula with a trip to the beach.

"Your family?" Zatanna asks, careful to level the surprise in her voice. Artemis has rarely mentioned them.

"Anyone. The team, our friends." Her voice cuts out a bit before she adds with disquiet, "My family."

Zatanna stays silent for a while, mulling over her response. Dimly, she finds herself grateful for this new patience in Artemis.

"I kept thinking, 'I'll tell them when she's stronger. Once she remembers,'" Zatanna confesses, the guilt familiar in her mouth. "I thought they'd be so happy to see you that they'd forgive me for lying. But then…"

She trails off, her hand extended in the air between them, rolling at the wrist to indicate the silent understanding that has settled in the house. Artemis nods, her eyes betraying nothing of the contempt that Zatanna still suspects lurks beneath it all. So Zatanna stands, walks to the mantle beside Artemis to stare at Paula's eyes squinting at the sun behind Zatanna's camera that summer day.

"I can take you to see her," Zatanna offers quietly, "if you want."

Artemis is quiet for a long time, her thumb trailing a slow descent down the edge of the frame.

"Maybe."

* * *

"What if I never remember?" Artemis asked, forty-one days after she died, two days after she opened her eyes.

"That won't happen," Zatanna had promised with a fierceness she would not have believed herself capable of forty-two days ago. "I won't let that happen."

* * *

"Do you remember what I said that night?"

Artemis nods, tired from their deliberation, but forgiving and calm all the same.

"I'm sorry," Zatanna swears once more, "I wish I had answered you the right way."

* * *

Zatanna finally convinces Artemis to close the windows on the first snow of the season, a request that is met with light-hearted grumbling and the quiet click of each window shutting.

"Thank you, dear," Zatanna says saccharine sweet, fluttering her eyelashes in exaggerated devotion.

Artemis wrinkles her nose, but laughs all the same, humor in every crease of her grin. There's pink lipstick on her lips and it's a different smile than the one that Zatanna remembers.

Zatanna takes the sleeves of Artemis's sweater, tilting her head and bringing herself up close to press her own smile to Artemis's.

"I love you," Zatanna whispers against her lips, happy to find her words finally true again.

* * *

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